Few people can have visited the great and wealthy capital of the French empire without being struck with the paucity of churches it contains. Few can have visited New York, which is not even the capital of the State whose name it bears, without being struck with the opposite fact. The latter city abounds in churches, still I saw many additional ones in course of construction. Many of these churches have cost large sums of money, and are of good architectural designs. As a general rule, those who minister in them are very liberally maintained: I was astonished at hearing the amount of the annual collections in some of them.
The clergy are allowed much freedom of expression in America. A gentleman residing in New York, while conversing with me on this subject, made the following statement of what he supposed was the general practice:—‘The way in which we deal with the clergy here is to pay them well, and to encourage them to say exactly what they think. What we pay them for is not other people’s ideas and opinions—that we can find in books—but their own. We expect them to devote a reasonable portion of their time and all the mental powers they possess to theological study, and then to give us the result.’ This broad construction of the duty of a clergyman, as a religious teacher, coincides very much with what I was frequently told, that the broad way of thinking was becoming the common way of thinking in almost all the American churches. Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, though a Presbyterian, is very broad, and never has a seat empty in his church. Sunday after Sunday, three thousand people assemble to hear him preach. In American society religious questions are frequently discussed. No one feels any disposition to avoid them, because expression of opinion is perfectly free. An American lady once said to me across the table, and was heard by everyone present, that ‘every thinking American was of opinion that religion, if not in conformity with the knowledge and sentiments of the times, was a dead thing.’ In New York this expression of opinion appeared perfectly natural; but I suppose that if an English lady entertained ideas of this kind, she would not think it allowable for her to enunciate them in company.
Service at the Rev. H. W. Beecher’s Church.
The most celebrated preacher in America is Mr. Henry Ward Beecher. On the subjugation of the South he was the man selected by President Lincoln from all the great speakers of the United States to pronounce at Fort Sumter, where the war had commenced, an oration which would signalise its conclusion with an eloquence worthy of the occasion. The three thousand sittings his church contains, I was told, are let by auction for sums which on this side of the water would appear fabulous. He returns his income at 8,000l. a year. Of course I went to hear him, and through the assistance of one of his congregation obtained a seat.
The church is very much in the form of a theatre. The stage is occupied by Mr. Beecher himself. Over the stage, however, is a gallery for the organ and choir. There was not, on the occasion upon which I was present, a vacant place in the building. As one looked down from what corresponded with the gallery of a theatre, there appeared to be no aisles in the body of the church, because as soon as the occupants of the pews had taken their places, seats that had been fastened up against the outside of the pews were opened out and instantly filled. The service commenced with the Te Deum, chanted by a choir of ladies and gentlemen. A short prayer was then offered. This was followed by a short lesson from the book of Ecclesiastes, which was all that the service contained from the Holy Scriptures. Six or seven children were now baptised. The baptismal service consisted of several texts bearing more or less on the subject, which were chanted by the choir, Mr. Beecher afterwards sprinkling water upon each in the name of the Trinity. This was succeeded by a long prayer, which was rather a thanksgiving for domestic happiness than a prayer. A hymn was then sung, during the singing of which very few of the vast congregation rose from their seats. There was, of course, no kneeling during the prayers, or in any part of the service, which was concluded with a sermon of more than an hour’s length, taken from the few verses in Ecclesiastes that had been previously read. The sermon was an essay on ‘the art of making old age happy and beautiful.’ This was in connection with the administration of the sacrament of baptism. He spoke very eulogistically of a certain admiral, whose name I could not catch, now residing at Brooklyn, in the neighbourhood of Mr. Beecher’s church, and whom the preacher announced as the specimen old man. He inveighed strongly against all forms of dissipation, on the ground that ‘they take too much out of a man. They are,’ he said, ‘cheques drawn by youth on old age.’ He said ‘he had no objection to balls, provided they were held in the middle of the day and in the open air.’ He should like to see young people dancing on the green turf in summer. But crowded rooms and late hours were prejudicial to health.’ He thanked God that he had never used tobacco in any form. He said, ‘the use of it was a filthy, beastly habit, wasteful of health and of animal power.’ In speaking of excessive drinking, he said ‘that the American had not the excuse which the Englishman had, for the latter had so much water outside, that there was a reason for his never taking any inside.’ This was received by the congregation with great laughter, as were some other sallies contained in the sermon.
The Rev. H. W. Beecher.
According to our ideas, there was a great want of reverence in the service. People talked—some who were in my hearing, of dollars and investments—till the service commenced. One of the officers of the Church wore his hat till the congregation were more than half assembled. Mr. Beecher appeared to me to have but two tones, a very loud one and a quiet impressive one. The latter was very much the better of the two. His manuscript was placed on a desk on the stage. He could leave the desk with his manuscript on it whenever he pleased; and this he frequently did. One has no right to express an opinion of a preacher’s power after having heard only one sermon; all, therefore, that I will say of Mr. Beecher is what I heard said of him. I was told that his popularity never flagged, and that his originality had hitherto proved inexhaustible; for that during the many years he had been before the public, during which time everything he had said had been reported, he had never been known to repeat himself. I was also told that he had been a useful man in calming, as far as the great influence he possessed allowed, the storms both of religious controversy and of political animosity. It must be remembered that a clergyman of Mr. Beecher’s energy and talents has much more prominence and influence in America, where there is no governing class, than it would be possible for him to attain in England.
There is a club—perhaps we should call it a society or association—of Episcopalian Broad Churchmen, the members of which reside in the cities of New York and Philadelphia. I believe clergymen only are members.
Almost every Episcopal church in New York has a chapel attached to it, exclusively for the use of the poor. This has been done because it has been found there, just as is the case with us, that in the cities the poor will not use the same churches as the rich. We have in London, in a few cases, attempted to cure the same evil with the same remedy. The remedy, however, has not been fairly applied, for a better class of persons (the very thing that indisposes the ill-clad poor to be present) has been allowed to appropriate to themselves a large proportion of the sittings in these chapels.
I will mention here a conclusion to which I was brought by my observation of what was going on in the Episcopal Church in different parts of the Union. Among ministers and congregations there are, just as with us, some High Church, some Low Church, some Ritualistic, and some Broad Church. I think the proportion of those that are High Church is greater with them than with ourselves. The real and important difference between us on this head is, that in the American Church every minister and congregation belongs distinctly to one or other of these parties, and that every Church is worked at high pressure.